WEBVTT
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Tay my osiy like you just let me in my way.
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Welcome world to Blaze listeners and now watchers. As promised,
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I am doing video episodes, and as I stated previously,
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for those who do listen to my audio only episodes,
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I am primarily focusing on guest episodes and where those
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will be video because I just believe it's better to
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be able to see people's reactions for better context. You
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can see people's faces, et cetera. Welcome to Episode eighty
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and on today's episode, I have guest Evan Longen. Evan
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Longen is a psychologist of forty five years. He used
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to have his private practice. He also taught psycho therapy
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and he's a published author. He wrote the book The
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Root of Evil, and in that book he discusses how
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it is possible that evil can creep into society without
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us even knowing it. And of course this discussion definitely
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goes in the direction of Trump. We discuss Trump as
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many consider him to be evil or hitler or a dictator,
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and so that discussion has had But then we shift
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from domestic politics and talk about conflicts abroad. We talk
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about Israel, Gaza, and of course we discuss Russia and Ukraine.
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I really do hope you enjoy this episode. Evan's a
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very intelligent person, and this is a great episode to
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watch because in this episode you see that two people
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that don't necessarily agree. I'm not a democrat of the
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left and Devan is definitely not of the right, but
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we were still able to come together, have a discussion
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and even offer solutions that work, I mean, just makes
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sense for everybody, for humans living on the planet in
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a way that we can coexist in respec back to
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each other. So, without further ado, here is Evan Longan.
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So thank you for taking the time and coming onto
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the show. And as we just discussed earlier before I
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press record appropriate, giving what's going on in California, before
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we move on, I want to go ahead, and I
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mean the background that I see here on you had
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You were a psychologists before the private practice. Is this true? Yes? Okay?
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And you taught psychotherapy for over forty five years or
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so is that correct?
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Yes?
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Okay, awesome? And then you became an author that book
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The Root of Evil? And was that released in twenty
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twenty two or twenty twenty three.
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Twenty twenty At the end of twenty twenty two.
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So right on that cusp of transitioning into twenty three. Yes,
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and you're known for that. You sold a few copies
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for sure, and you do discuss it and the subjects
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in here. Now, I'm a politics and geopolitics show, but
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I do like to venture onto other areas.
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Yeah.
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That being said, I think a lot of what you
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wrote in what you study is very appropriate to what's
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going on today. I did want to ask you, though,
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before we dive into that. Excuse me while I turn
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this up, that that you mentioned something I'm reading here,
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you your bio about how psychotherapy I believe, if I'm
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getting this correct, can fail society or it can lead Yes, okay.
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Yeah, Yeah, That's how I got interested in this whole
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idea of the breakdown of institutions and the breakdown of
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the body politic because in my own field we failed
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people frequently.
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Okay.
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I originally was a fellow at the Nathan Ackerman Family Institute,
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where I studied post doc and family therapy, and one
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of the things we noted back then was that the
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person who's the identified patient may in fact be the
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person who is most likely to bring new perspective to
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the family, and over and over again in my career,
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I was given very difficult cases that were not responding
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to treatment, and they found that they weren't responding to
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treatment because they were treating the wrong person. That the
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person that was the hospitalized or identified patient was not
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the problem. And I have a case that I talk
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about in my book that's the simplest one to understand.
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I get a call from a mother who tells me
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that her doctor, her pediatrician, had referred her family to
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me that her son had just been excluded from school
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after he went back to school and knocked out all
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the windows on the first floor of the school. This
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is an eight year old boy. So I said to
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the mother, well, okay, I'm more than happy to see you.
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I want to see you tomorrow with your whole family
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and with the boy and we'll all talk about what's
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going on. And the first thing she says to me, no, no, no, no, no,
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you don't get it. My son is the problem. We
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don't need to come in. And I said, ah, well,
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you have to humor me, because this is how I work.
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I like to see a family together, get a feel
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for what the dynamics are that are going on in
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the family, and if you want to bring your son in,
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I'm more than happy to see you. She said, well,
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I'm not coming in. I said, well, listen, then go
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back to your pediatrician and get a referral to someone else.
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She said, well, the doctor said you're the best around.
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I said, well, thank you, So if you want my help,
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come in. So the next day she arrives her husband
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and herself and her son, but she didn't bring her daughter.
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And I said to her, where's your daughter? And she said,
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my daughter's not a problem. My son's the problem, and
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you've got to fix him. Well you see where this
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is going obviously, absolutely yea. So they all come into
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the office, the three of them, and I say to
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this son, would you do me a favor, Take your
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chair and bring it up next to me. I want
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you to be my assistant therapist. And he goes really,
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and I said, yeah, I'd like you to help me.
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And the mother goes, when is this What are you doing?
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You're rewarding him for being a bad kid. I said, no,
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I'm getting him to participate and to feel safe and
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to join me in exploring what's going on in the family. Well,
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to make a long story short. Ultimately she's about to
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leave when the father says, I can't take it anymore.
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My wife was out cold on the floor when he
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came home from school. She's drunk, she's out of control,
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and he, in his own way, went looking for help.
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I said, Wow, that's really impressive. Dead. So I've seen
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so much of that. I've seen where it's so easy
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to look at a situation and blame that person, and
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so often if that kid had been treated in a
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more traditional setting, he would have been in therapy forever
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with no progress.
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Well because the mother would to mask her own actions
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and her own behavior. Yes, it's effective family units.
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So those are the kinds of situations that's as blatant
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one as I can can share. One of the we
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worked with a team. We would have a team of
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people who sat in the room with me, and the
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family would sit with other members of my team being interviewed,
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and then the family would we would talk amongst ourselves
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about the things we heard. In this one instance, a
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young man who had been in McLean's Hospitals, a famous
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say chiatric facility, and had been removed because he wasn't
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making progress, sat with us on our team, and the
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mother and the father and the sister were talking on
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the other side of the room, and after they finished talking,
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he looked at us and he said, holy cow, is
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it possible that I did the things I did because
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I knew my mother was so depressed and I needed
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to do it to help the family? Is that? And
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this came spontaneously from this twelve year old boy. So again,
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over and over and over, I have been called into
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difficult situations that don't get better because that's treating the
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wrong situation, the wrong problem, right, That's how I got
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into this.
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Yeah, that's common in the medical industry in general. I mean, yes, yeah,
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that's unfortunate. So with that that being said, is that
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that is how why you got into doing what you're
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doing and why you chose to get on the path
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of researching. And in your book you do give you
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your opinions on how evil can easily sneak into society.
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Now does this tie into that? Do you think?
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Yeah? Again, what I started to see in situations in
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the families that work with. And by the way, I
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also back back around nineteen twenty ten that era. For
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five years I was in the Middle East, working with
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Palestinian and Israeli children, bringing them together to talk with
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each other and to learn about each other and to collaborate.
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So my experience went from being a psychotherapist to working
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in issues in the community. But what I saw over
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and over again was one binary thinking us versus them
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in the case of the Middle East, Israelis versus Palestinians.
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In today's California, the weight majority versus minority immigrants, they're
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seen as different, they're seen as other. The second thing
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is power over behavior, where the psychiatrist or the teacher
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or the politician uses power to control situations that should
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come about in a more collaborative discussion between people. The
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third piece is the control of information. Today, today a
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blatant thing happened. I don't know if you saw. Senator
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Padilla was tackled when he was trying to ask questions
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of the Secretary of Homeland Security.
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I did not see that today. Yet he was.
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Thrown to the ground, he was handcuffed, And the story
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that MAGA is putting out is that they didn't know
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who he was, he didn't identify himself. Well, you can
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watch the TV reporting of this, so you can see
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he's going I'm Senator Padilla, I mean said and throwing
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him to the ground. So again there's a distortion of information.
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Information is corrupted, we don't get the truth. And the
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final the final piece that I found was people come
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up with simplistic solutions to complex problems.
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Yeah, they do.
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So instead of they're saying, Okay, this is going to
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require some thought. We're going to have to work together.
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Both sides have to come together and collaborate to come
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up with a solution. Unfortunately, in all the instances that
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I put in my book of Evil, in the community,
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in the college, in psychotherapy, we come up with simplistic solutions.
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This kid broke the windows. He needs to be the patient.
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It's it's too often a simplistic approach to something that
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requires more in depth discussion and collaboration.
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Well, because punishment's not treating the cause right or the
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root of why they behave that way right. So that
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all being said, it's in society, I mean, we'll just
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dive into because we're already talking about things that are
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going on. Obviously, Trump administration repolarizing figure. Some people approve,
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some people don't, but regardless of some people see him
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as a dictator, fascist, evil person. Fine, so let's talk
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about how or if you can explain rather because you're
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the expert in this is from your viewpoint, How does
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evil creep in? How does it get accepted to society?
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And how do these cults get formed where people are
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just willingly, just blindly following the leader. How does this happen?
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How does it happen? I just got back from Europe.
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I was in Germany in Austria, and I was struck
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by what a wonderful culture, historic culture, the German Austrian
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culture has been over generations. How was it possible that
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people joined with Adolf Hitler in this horrendous movement that
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was so inhuman, so evil, so dastardly. I don't know
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whether the were to you.
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That is the prime example of evil sneaking in and
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become acceptable, right.
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And being accepted. My senses, you need people to be frightened,
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You need people to feel like they're not being heard.
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I didn't spend enough time in my book talking about that.
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The reason why Hitler took hold is the people of
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Germany felt like they were mistreated after World War One.
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They were poor, they were hungry, they wanted more opportunity,
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and Hitler was giving them a sense of the power,
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sense of being heard. Trump is doing exactly the same thing.
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Trump listened to people who were feeling left out, feeling
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like to peopleeople who felt like they weren't given the
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same opportunities as others. Unfortunately, those people are not being
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represented by Trump. He is not making it any easier
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for them to buy eggs, He's not making it any
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easier for them to have access. In fact, his whole
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political economic strategy is he's going to give more money
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to the rich and then ultimately that's going to seep
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down to the poor people. So again they they they
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think he's he is speaking to their hurt and their
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anger and their receptive to it. That's how it happens,
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I think.
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I mean, he can't argue against that. That is that
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is usually how most any leader who gets elected, though
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it comes into power regardless. I mean, you're you're trying
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to play it to people's sympathies, right, That's usually what But.
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The problem the problem with with Trump, with Hitler, with
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other meglomaniacs is that they really uh don't offer solutions
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that will make the situation any better. They offer false
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solutions that ultimately create more problems.
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It's interesting do you think some of some of because